Welcome to Techy Nana's Techy Tips. This site is an eclectic mix of discoveries, thoughts, and experiences as I travel in the ever changing world of educational technology. You'll find "Cool Tools" and "Tips & Tricks" as well as sites and movies that aid in the quest for technology integration ~ no matter what the age!
Living and teaching in Glendale, California, this site is for users in my school district and elsewhere in cyberspace.

Monday, November 23, 2009

A tweet from @asbella inspired me to email a number of people in our district and ask them to finish the sentence, "I am thankful for...". I used Google forms to create the starter so the responses would be anonymous. I copied and pasted the answers into a wordle at wordle.net and here is the result.

It's easy to see what is most important to our staff on this special holiday. May you, too, have a happy and blessed Thanksgiving 2009!

Monday, August 10, 2009

I have been remiss in updating my blog but this was a summer to enjoy and I did. Summer began with a trip to Silver Spring where I had the privilege of attending the Discovery Education Network (DEN) Leadership Council (LC) Symposium. Focusing on each state's different LC chairs (Chair, Events, and Blog) we shared, planned, and forecast the upcoming year.

Saturday's "Day at Discovery School" pre-NECC (National Educational Computing Conference) event provided a whole new set of DEN members and networking. A school bell began our day and it was more fun than I can remember having in 'real' school.

Sunday was the 3rd Annual "Constructivist Celebration at NECC". Wow, what an incredible day. While I follow Gary Stager on Twitter I had never met him and he was a great speaker. Peter Reynolds (my educational hero) gave the keynote; Melinda Kolk from Tech4Learning spoke; and attendees were gifted with some fabulous software.

NECC followed in Washington, DC and it was as inspiring as always. I attended a number of seminars, networked in the Cyber Cafe, and collected ribbons for my name tage. I met Lee and Sasha from Commoncraft; Jim from Glogster;

I took the metro into DC each day and delighted in the freedom of getting to and fro in such an easy way. I only wish my own home town had such a great system for travel.

Saturday, June 27, 2009

I am attending the DEN Leadership Council Symposium in Silver Spring, MD and a 4th birthday, pre-NECC "Day at Discovery School" event as well. One of the great presentations was "What's New in Discovery" illustrating the new, updated site for Discovery Educators and Discovery Streaming. One incredible facet of the site is MediaShare which is open to all members of the DEN. DEN members can explore and store the files/lessons that have been uploaded but only STAR DEN members can upload to the site and DEN STARS have the most options (hint - another GREAT reason to become a DEN STAR) as Media Share allows multiple uploads/types and converts all video to Flash. Read on for more info!

Steve Dembo, of the Discovery Educator Network, shared with us that MediaShare is a media management server marketed to school districts in order to aggregate/upload/store materials in one place. This product evolved from Discovery Education's need to contain info in one place. All DEN members can get into/download materials, but only STARS have full upload access. Under a single asset, you can place as many files/resources as you want (read - the beauty of MediaShare) visible to all in the DEN. You also have options to share with with the DEN and your District (either-or/both) + the “national audience”;

Media Share does have a limit for files up to 100mb per file. You can upload as many as ten (you saw it, 10!) 100mb files! When you are finished with creating a MediaShare resource, even if you do not click “done,” your uploads are still there. The resource is created and is in “search”; you can find it by going back to your resources.

MediaShare will accept embeddable code in the “description” box; so instead of uploading a file, go to a VoiceThread for the embed and paste in the description box. When you put the code in “description,” it “resolves” and becomes the end product of embeddable code. The beauty of MediaShare is that you can upload multiple media into the description via embeddable code, including a ustream.tv box so that the next time you did the presentation, you could have the live feed as a resource in real time. MS is a very flexible system: but remember to always check “check to allow embedding/direct linking” if you want to share your upload outside MediaShare.

Monday, June 22, 2009

My good friend and colleague Shelley O began using Delicious.com and keeps raving about how wonderful it is. I really didn't want to start yet another bookmarking site but persuasive Shelley got me over there.

It really is easy to use and easy to moderate. I found the network button so I can auto-send new sites I mark to Shelley and other educator colleagues. I created one tag especially for the Tech Leaders in our district so now every site I email to them is tagged so they can just click "their" tag and find what I've sent so easily. Eventually the email dates will coincide with the delicious tags and even easier to discover.

Monday, May 18, 2009

Another 'tweet' I received today was a 'twitpic' from @jenwagner. She posted a thought from @jorech that I really like. I may print it and post it or give copies to the techs in my office. I am blessed that the techs who support my work truly appreciate what we do in education.

Okay, I was trying to find the new Bloom's Taxonomic Hierarchy Pyramid shown on the VisualBloomswiki but I got side-tracked - go figure, me?

I love using Wordle and couldn't resist a look at Mike Fisher's post on Thirty Ways to Use Wordle. He collaborated with Tom Barrett, an educator in Nottingham England (I follow both of them on Twitter) and allow the SlideShare to be embedded so here it is. I hope you enjoy as much as I do and find time to incorporate one or more of the ideas. Thirty has grown to 34 and if my suggestion to add to the preso is included they will be up to 35 ways! My suggestion? Use Wordle to show This Week's Spelling Words!

Just saw a post on Twitter from @bethstill sharing a picture on Twitpic of a shirt she purchased to wear at NECC in June.

I recently changed my Twitter name to @TechyNana so I decided to see how my shirt would look. I headed right out to TwitterMosaic and, fortunate enough to follow so many wonderful techies, I found the beautiful mosaic shown below. (I also purchased my own shirt and a new coffee mug - woohoo!)

Meet Techy Nana (Mrs. Warren)

Me a Teacher Specialist in Technology?

These are the things that I hold dear: God and my faith, time with family, anything technology, getting lost in a mystery novel, WoW, wine tasting in Napa, knitting while traveling, and a cosmo by the fire with my hubby.
My personal belief ~ "A-ha" moments happen no matter what a student's age!